When Computer Problems Follow You Home, Who Can You Call?
by Andy Trask

You are the essence of modern. You have a Personal Computer or even a network of computers at home. You have high-speed access to the Internet. Your task list, calendar, and address book are all carried handily in your PDA and synchronized with your computer. You have CDs, DVDs, USB and a PC with XP. You have the Klez virus, your cell phone is a portal to the world, and the family dog is one of those little robotic jobs. (SCREEECHHH! Put on the brakes! The Klez virus??!)

Okay, so now you know, that just behind the glamorous sheen of high tech equipment you've been surrounding yourself with lies the new Wild West. With bad guys like viruses, corruption and incompatibilities lurking around every corner, it takes a new breed of sheriff to keep the townsfolk safe. So who can you call when you tell your PC to do one thing and it does another or worse yet does nothing? This is a problem faced by thousands of home and small business computer users every day. Like your counterparts in corporate America, you have computer problems, but unlike those pampered folks, you don't have an internal helpdesk or an IT department just a phone call away. Of course you may have a whiz-kid on the block or a friend or relative who's pretty good with computers, but if you've ever gone that route, you know you're putting your computer's life at stake and sometimes the "cure" can be worse than the disease itself. Not to mention your computer-savvy friends may seem less "friendly" after too many late night rescues.

So again the question who can you call? Well, if you are lucky enough to live in Eastern Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire, or the Providence Rhode Island area, then you can have a professional computer geek on your doorstep usually within 24 hours of calling Geek Housecalls. Geek Housecalls was founded with the intent to provide world-class onsite computer support for home and small business computer users.

One of the frustrations that even someone with moderate computer knowledge faces at home is identifying what the cause of a problem really is. Easy though that may sound, it is far from simple and that's because any number of problems can have the exact same symptoms. For example, let's say you get an email from a friend and want to print it out, so you click the printer icon and wait expectantly for your printer to spring to life and eagerly do your bidding. Five minutes later, not only has your printer not sprung, but in fact it hasn't made a peep or a movement. There's no sign of life whatsoever except maybe that cheerful glowing power light telling you nobody tripped over the power cord and unplugged it. So you do what any red-blooded computer user would do and hit the printer icon again thinking "maybe I actually missed the button last time." Another five minutes passes and now you're thinking perhaps there's a problem with your silent motionless printer.

Two or three more icon clicks later and now you're convinced there's a problem so you do what any red-blooded computer user would do in this situation: power off the printer and power it back on again. And voila! It springs to life! Of course your ecstasy over this seeming victory soon pales as the printer abruptly falls silent sans your output and you realize all those churning noises were just the "warm-up" sequence your printer normally goes through when you turn it on. It's not panic time yet though because you are no babe in the woods and you know from repeated conversations with technical and non-technical gurus alike, that shutting down and restarting your computer will probably solve the problem. And so you shut it down

And then a little gray box with this mysterious message appears as your computer restarts and it says "You have print jobs waiting on LPT1: Would you like to print them now? Click YES to print or NO to cancel." Pleased that your computer has recognized the error of its ways, you click YES and your computer finishes starting up. But still your printer remains silent! What next? Wiggle the cords? Shuffle the paper? Throw the printer in the trash? You may try all of these things in frustration, but none of them get you what you want which is a printout of an email from a friend (remember where all this started?). You can always call your friend or your brother-in-law the computer genius, but didn't you already do that twice this past month?

What could the problem be? Well it could be a faulty or intermittent cable or it could be a failure of interface circuitry in the printer. It could be failure of the software that makes your computer "talk to" the printer (in geek speak, that's the "printer driver"), failure of the port hardware on your computer or failure of the software driver for that port. It could be failure of a variety of software components within windows including a corrupt windows registry or spooler, or even a problem with the program you use to get your email! As you can see, this one simple-seeming symptom could have potentially dozens of causes, and it's now that you need a professional computer geek to come to your house or small office to help solve the problem!

What do you have to lose if you continue trying to solve it yourself? How about hours or days even, appointments, meals, time with your family, goodwill from relatives and friends, your hair or your sanity! And for what? The thrill of the chase? Perhaps if you were a computer geek, but unless you are, you know when to call it quits and turn the job over to a professional. And that's where Geek Housecalls is standing by on the other end of the line with over twenty friendly knowledgeable geeks available to be your own personal IT department at your beck and call.

Andy Trask is the Head Geek at Geek Housecalls (on the web at www.geekhousecalls.com). Based in Lexington Mass, Geek Housecalls provides computer hardware and software troubleshooting, networking, installations, upgrades, and general assistance to residential and small business computer users in Boston and the surrounding North, South, and Western suburbs as well as Rhode Island and southern New Hampshire. If you have a question or topic you'd like to see addressed by The Geeks, please send email to: agtm@geekhousecalls.com

If you're interested in reprinting this or other articles from this series on a website or in a printed publication please contact Andy Trask at andy@geekhousecalls.com for information about our liberal sharing policy!

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